Steve Emerson, Reza Aslan, and the mainstream media: some errors are more erroneous than others

Over the last few days, the mainstream media has been howling with glee over Steve Emerson’s gaffe on Fox News. Emerson said that in Britain, “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in,” and “in parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound, seriously, anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire.” Birmingham is not actually totally Muslim, and so Emerson apologized: “There was no excuse for making this mistake, and I owe an apology to every resident of Birmingham. I am not going to make any excuses. I made an inexcusable error. And I am obligated to openly acknowledge that mistake. I wish to apologize for all residents of that great city of Birmingham.”

The Leftist media and its Islamic supremacist allies are trying to use this to get all foes of jihad terror off the air: numerous mainstream media outlets used the incident to impugn the reliability not only of Emerson, but of all critics of terror and of Fox News as a whole. But as you might expect, their outrage and ridicule are selective. Emerson overstated his case, but he was talking about a problem that is real. “Muslim Patrols” that violently enforced Sharia in London were jailed late in 2013, and there are no-go areas for non-Muslims in Birmingham and elsewhere in Britain: commenters on a Daily Mail piece about Emerson’s gaffe stated: “Just shows Cameron doesn’t even know what is happening in this country , as the news presenter is totally correct , its a no go zone .” “Include parts of London in that too. Seen first hand.” “There ARE some parts of Birmingham where you darent or shouldn’t go !” “Is he far off the truth? Maybe it’s not true for Birmingham as a whole but there are certain areas where it is true. Certainly it is true of certain other Towns in the UK. Bradford, Leicester, Luton spring to mind.”

Aslan has also claimed that the Biblical story of Noah was barely four verses long — which he then corrected to forty, but that was wrong again, as it is 89 verses long. Aslan claimed that the “founding philosophy of the Jesuits” was “the preferential option for the poor,” but the Jesuits were founded in 1534, and according to the California Catholic Conference, “the popular term ‘preferential option for the poor’ is relatively new. Its first use in a Church document is in 1968.” He invoked Pope Pius XI as an example of how “historically, Fascist ideology did infect corners of the Catholic world,” apparently ignorant of the fact that Pius XI issued the anti-fascist encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.

But to the mainstream media, Reza Aslan is a “renowned scholar,” while Steve Emerson, who has been on the front lines exposing the activities of jihad terrorists and Islamic supremacists for over twenty years, is a “self-proclaimed expert.” All you have to do is mouth the accepted establishment opinions, kids, and you, too, can be a renowned scholar!

Comments

This is why Spencer is always in exactitude mode, lean and concise in a way of speaking that used to be the norm in academe. And it’s served him well, commenting off the cuff would have had him destroyed in media years ago. It’s kind of a boring delivery style, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Look at the news entertainers feast on poor Emerson for his facutal error but not even mention Aslan’s many factual errors. That’s why Spencer’s concise delivery mode is necessary.

Liberal haters attacked Emerson and Fox News for this mistake on Yahoo Answers, but they will never attack Muslim supremacists who make errors. Azlan’s statement that Muhammad outlawed slavery is pure Taqiyya.

Exactly, my late ex. parked in a side street in Sparkbrook and was immediatly told by a Muslim walking by that she was not safe parking there.

I stayed in Hall Green for 18 months and driving down Stratford Road as one gets close to Birmingham must be just like driving in a city in Pakistan as there was not a single white face seen on either side of the road. On a bus ride from Birmingham to Hall Green on three occasions I was the only white on the bus.

Emerson’s error was a simple misstatement. He meant to say “parts of Birmingham”. His apology did not have to be so profuse.

In the case of Aslan, I suspect his errors are the result of an arrogance that causes him to simply babble on. When you babble on, you make errors-stupid errors. Errors that get one banished to places like Riverside or in his case the University of California at Riverside.

Another of Aslan’s favorites is muddying the waters of distinction between Jesus and Mohammad and attempting to draw some kind of moral equivalence between them. I’m an agnostic, and it’s readily apparent to me that Jesus was much the human being Muhammad wasn’t. This of course eats at Aslan, so he writes a book called “Zealot”, implying Jesus was just the sort of religious reprobate Muhammad was. Well, it’s obviously ludicrous, but leftist will eat it up and ask for more, as they do. The left wing gets off like nothing else through championing the cause of the world’s most right-wing mainstream ideology– undoubtedly because they are mostly brown; it seems like quite a good example of racism to me.

Anyway, I’ll be writing a response piece to Aslan’s passive-aggressive propaganda; it will be about the life of Mohammad, and title “Gangster”. Stay tuned!

“Another of Aslan’s favorites is muddying the waters of distinction between Jesus and Mohammad and attempting to draw some kind of moral equivalence between them. I’m an agnostic, and it’s readily apparent to me that Jesus was much the human being Muhammad wasn’t. This of course eats at Aslan, so he writes a book called “Zealot”, implying Jesus was just the sort of religious reprobate Muhammad was.”

As for Aslan and stupidity–perhaps. But this overlooks Aslan as a very competent–propagandist indeed. Evasion by “complexification” ( = “how can we tell who’s a moderate Muslim?” silences the question he’d avoid). Evasion by absurdity bought by readers ( = “religion is significantly what people bring to it and make out of it” just dilutes the facts about Islam, or tries to.) Evasion by ju-jitsu or the audience does the heavy lifting to hear what they’d want to. (“What is sharia? Oh, just stuff from the 7th century we don’t do any more, plus the desire for Sharia-based family-dispute courts.”) Naive listeners think Whew, good, no more stoning amputations lashings any more. Plus oh how reasonable, just family courts.” WOW.

But Aslan has a new superior competitor in deception. I tried to write a review of Harris Zafar’s recent Demystifying Islam. Gave up as his covert slipperiness couldn’t be conveyed in a review.

Suggesion: to really reach people and awake them: do a book of parallel columns. Left-hand, what the people like Aslan, Rauf, Ramadan, Patel, etc. say (maybe even Armstrong, Esposito)–and on the right-hand, Spencer, Ibraiham, Bostom, Warrack on the very same subjects!. Comparison-contrast would make the point, win the day. Onward…

Well, let’s make a deal with the left. We’ll ban Emerson from ever speaking in public again if Obama steps down as president for saying he’s been in 57 states and for pronouncing Marine Corps. as corpse. And Biden can’t be his replacement.

vlparker – It was Corpsman not Marine Corps. Otherwise I agree. The 57 states was an interesting slip. Considering that at the time there were 57 countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

I had the pleasure of meeting Steve Emerson when he spoke in Philadelphia some ten years ago (along with Daniel Pipes). I definitely remember asking him at that time if it wasn’t very possibly the case that all of Islam was rotten and not just some extremist version of it. His response to me was something to the effect that then the world has an even greater problem than it does now if what I proposed was so. He left it at that. I knew he was being careful. And he knew that I knew he was being careful. After all, why address a larger issue when one can address a “lesser” issue (N.B., the Supreme Court of the United States does this all the itme in so many of its decisions)?

I left respecting him, admiring him for his courage, his knowledge and his overall intellect. I actually took leave of him at a restaurant in Center City (N.B., the heart of Philadelphia is NEVER called “downtown” by “natives”) and as he walked away all by himself down Broad Street I thought to myself, my God, there goes a very important American who is completely vulnerable right now.

The fact that he might make a mistake here and there (as here related) about some detail respecting the totalitarian ideology which is Islam, which is a putrid and vile religious belief system and which is inimical to such things as overall liberty, equality under the law and women’s rights, is as nothing considering 1) his precision about Islamic terrorism time and time again going back more than twenty years; 2) that Islam is indeed, as Bertrand Russell opined almost a century ago, the only major faith which is totalitairan in ideology and structure; and that 3) fools aplenty, like Obama, Cameron, Kerry, Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, the present Pope et al., have made truly ludicrous statements about Islam which don’t just get a detail wrong but which, per such statements, place all of Western Civilization in greater jeopardy PRECISELY because they whitewash Islam completely.

By comparison, any fault by Emerson on the specific matter this aritlce deals with is as nothing. One either knows this or should know it. Besides, Emerson has apologized. When has the Islamic world and its manipulative defenders like Aslan ever apologized for anything? Ditto for the plethora of dhimmis like the Clintons, Kerry, Obama, Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, et al. who, in full dhimmi-mode, contiinue to make excuses for the greatest and most menacing spiritual fascism of all time———Islam.

Naik says some things in Islam were abolished in stages. For example, at first the Qur’an says alcohol has some profit but more loss (2:219), next it says not to pray while intoxicated (4:43), and finally alcohol is totally prohibited (5:90). Similarly, slavery was abolished in stages.

At the time, he says, slavery was very much ingrained in the culture of the Arabs. At first Islam says to give slaves rights and commends freeing a slave, helping slaves, and giving slaves charity. “But there’s no verse in the Qur’an which totally prohibits slavery”. Naik concludes, without his usual flourish of citing scripture, that it was supposed to be abolished later, because slavery was so much ingrained that “Islam set the ball rolling” and the final outcome was to take place “a few decades or a few years” after the time of the prophet. Notice, however, the good doctor doesn’t assert that it actually happened.

Essentially, the argument is that Mohammed couldn’t abolish slavery because the Arabs were more addicted to it than to alcohol. It didn’t help that Mohammed himself was a slaveaholic.

That would mean our closet case Reza Aslan accuses the Koran of lying. Total blasphemy. He wouldn’t survive even a few months amongst Isis without being crucified. Although I have heard that one of Isis’s senior leaders demand sexual favors from all new male recruits which may thrill Aslan.

Aslan is just another low information, arrogant without substance, loud mouth embarrassment to humanity that the media love to give air time to because he presents himself as cool and fashionable in their shallow world.

I read your site daily and agree with most of what is said here but the article above about Birmingham, Bradford, Luton etc tends to make me think maybe I shouldn’t just take everything you say as Gospel so to speak. While of course there are high Muslim populations in these cities they are simply not as you describe them. There are areas much as there are areas of any city in the US or most other countries around the world (and I have lived in many including the middle east) that it would be advisable to avoid especially during certain times of the day for one reason or another. But to suggest that Bradford and Luton are no go areas (as a sort of revenge for the uproar caused by labeling the entire city of Birmingham as such and then having to back down) is equally ridiculous. You could go to most any area of these cities and go about your business without trouble and they most certainly are not off limits to the police or any other emergency services.Making wild claims does not further the cause. Alerting people to the dangers is good and needs to be done but crying wolf may make good publicity especially for people who have never been to these places and have perhaps seen one or two youtube videos of these bearded nutters ranting on the street but it also dilutes the message when it is obviously not true.It may be so one day and it may not be too far in the future but try to keep things balanced. I know Robert didn’t get into the UK which was a travesty but he has since launched a kind of mini vendetta against every decision taken or event that takes place in the UK and I think that is counterproductive and a little below him.Anyway, keep up the good work but try and stick to facts not be tempted to overstate for effect.

CJO, Correct me if I am wrong. There are areas in the UK that would be no go zones for the police, if the police hadn’t adopted some Islamic customs in their dealings with the Muslim areas. Having policewomen wear the hijab when visiting the areas is one. Acceding to Sharia law for some offences is another. Even the UK courts are handing down lenient sentences for Muslim defendants on the basis of there supposed ignorance of UK law.

Davrod
They do adopt some practices (a mistake in my opinion) such as putting boots on dogs in a mosque at times if carrying out a visit (not a raid) for public relations purposes and there is a debate raging about the Sharia courts thing – problem stemming from the allowing of Jewish family courts to settle some matters therefore making it difficult to ban Sharia courts from ding the same. Of course these courts have been exposed on hidden camera documentaries seriously overstepping their mandate. And although the understanding is that English common law always overrules Sharia rulings there are cases of women being seriously mistreated and either being afraid to complain under the threat of being ostracized from their community or in the case of more recent immigrants them not really understanding their rights under English law. This hardly leads to the conclusion that entire cities are no go areas. A lot of problems for sure but nowhere near the reported hysteria – yet. Who knows where it will all end. I find on my yearly trips back home to England (I live in Mexico now) that the country has changed almost beyond recognition but at the same time it is never anywhere near as bad as reported here. I am from Newcastle. It is a large city and of course has it’s share of immigrants. Last summer I saw to my horror a couple of men walking with their burka clad (wives?) walking the required distance behind them BUT I also saw in a popular clothes store a woman with her hair covered and modest loose clothing shopping with her daughters. The youngest were small children and as in most cases are pretty much dressed normally but the teenager was dressed the way pretty much all British Teenage girls dress – pretty slutty would be the best way to describe it and I thought to myself “they will indeed assimilate and over time and if allowed to by their peers” Problem is the numbers continue to rise and the communities become so large that there is no need for them to integrate plus the pressure from more recent arrivals and relatives from abroad. A time of settling in in required. What alternative is there? Multi-culture-ism has pretty much been recognized as a complete if well intentioned failure and I have seen that things such as providing translators all the time and multi language forms and procedures are being phased and immigrants are basically going to be “forced” to learn English. In summary; is all lost no. Not yet.

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